9. HANNIBAL PLEADS FOR PEACE.

BEFORE THE BATTLE OF ZAMA.

(B. C. 202.)

SINCE fate has so ordained it that I, who began the war, and have so often been on the point of ending it by a complete conquest, should now come, of my own motion, to ask a peace, I am glad that it is of you, Scipio, I have the fortune to ask it. Nor will this be among the least of your glories, that Hannibal, victorious over so many Roman generals, submitted at last to you.

I could wish that our fathers, and we, had confined our ambition within the limits which Nature seems to have prescribed to it, the shores of Africa and the shores of Italy. The gods did not give us that mind. On both sides, we have been so eager after foreign possessions as to put our own to the hazard of war. Rome and Carthage have had, each in turn, to turn the enemy at her gates.

But, since errors past may be more easily blamed than corrected, let it now be the work of you and me to put an end, if possible, to the contention. For my own part, my years, and the experience I have had of the instability of Fortune incline me to leave nothing to her determination which reason can decide. But much I fear, Scipio, that your youth, your want of like experience, and your uninterrupted success, may render you averse to thoughts of peace.

He whom Fortune has never failed, rarely reflects upon her inconstancy. Yet without referring to former examples, my own perhaps may suffice to teach you moderation. I am the same Hannibal who, after the

victory at Cannæ, became master of the great part of your country, and deliberated with myself what fate I should decree to Italy and Rome.

And now, see the change! Here in Africa, I am come to treat with a Roman for my own preservation and my country's. Such are the sports of Fortune. Is she then to be trusted because she smiles? An advantageous peace is preferable to the hope of victory. The one is in your power; the other at the pleasure of the gods. Should you prove victorious, it would add little to your glory, or the glory of your country; if vanquished, you lose in one hour all the honor and reputation you have been so many years in acquiring.

But what is my aim in all this? That you should content yourself with our cession of Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and all islands between Italy and Africa. A peace on these conditions will, in my opinion, not only secure the tranquillity of Carthage, but be sufficiently glorious for you and for the Roman name. And do not tell me that some of our citizens dealt fraudulently with you in the late treaty. It is I, Hannibal, that now ask a peace. I ask it, because I think it expedient for my country; and thinking it expedient, I will inviolably maintain it. Trans. from Livy.

10. SCIPIO DECLINES HANNIBAL'S OVERTURES FOR PEACE.

BEFORE THE BATTLE OF ZAMA.

(B. C. 202.)

I KNOW very well, Hannibal, that it was the hope of your return which emboldened the Carthaginians to break the truce with us and lay aside all thoughts of peace,

when it was just upon the point of being concluded; and your present proposal is a proof of it. You retrench from their concessions everything but what we are and have been long in possession of.

But as it is your care that your fellow-citizens should feel under obligation to you of being eased of a great part of their burdens, so it devolves upon me that they draw no advantage from their perfidy. Nobody is more sensible than myself of the weakness of man and the power of Fortune, and that whatever we undertake is subject to a thousand chances.

If, before the Romans passed over into Africa, you had of your own accord made the offers you now make, I believe that they would not have been rejected. But as you have been forced out of Italy, and we are masters here of the open country, the situation of things is much altered. But this is chiefly to be considered, that the Carthaginians, by the late treaty which we made at their request, were, over and above what you offer, to have released to us prisoners, without ransom; to have delivered up their ships of war; to have paid us five thousand talents, and to have given us hostages for the performance of all. The Senate accepted these conditions, but Carthage failed on her part. Carthage deceived us. What is, then, to be done? Are the Carthaginians to be released from the most important articles of the treaty, as a reward for this breach of faith? No, certainly, no!

If, to the conditions before agreed upon, you had added some new articles to our advantage, there would have been matter of reference to the Roman people; but when, instead of adding, you retrench, there is no room for deliberation. The Carthaginians, therefore, must submit to us at discretion, or must vanquish us in battle.

SCIPIO AFRICANUS.

11.

CESAR'S DEATH JUSTIFIED.

THE assassination of Cæsar by Brutus occurred March 15, B. c. 44, and was publicly justified by Caius Cassius, as follows:

SOLDIERS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS, -The unjust reproaches of our enemies we could easily disprove, if we were not, by our numbers and the swords which we hold in our hands, in condition to despise them. While Cæsar led the armies of the Republic against the enemies of Rome, we took part in the same service with him, we obeyed him, we were happy to serve under his command. But when he declared war against the Commonwealth, we became his enemies; and when he became an usurper and tyrant, we resented, as an injury, even the favors which he presumed to bestow upon ourselves.

Had he fallen as a sacrifice to private resentment, we should not have been the proper actors in the execution of the sentence against him. He was willing to have indulged us with preferments and honors; but we were not willing to accept as the gift of a master what we were entitled to claim as free citizens. We conceived that he, in presuming to confer the honors of the Roman Republic, encroached on the prerogatives of the Roman people and insulted the authority of the Roman Senate. Cæsar cancelled the laws and overturned the constitution of his countrymen; he usurped all the powers of the Commonwealth; he set up a monarchy and affected to be a king. This our ancestors, at the expulsion of Tarquin, bound themselves and their posterity, by the most solemn oaths. and by the most direful imprecations, never to endure. The same obligation has been entailed upon us, as a debt, by our fathers; and we, having faithfully paid and discharged it, have performed the oath and averted the consequences of failure from ourselves and from our posterity.

In the station of soldiers, we might have committed ourselves, without reflection, to the command of an officer whose abilities and valor we admired; but in the character of Roman citizens, we have a far different part to sustain. I must suppose that I now speak to the Roman people and to the citizens of a free Republic; to men who have never learned to depend upon others for gratifications and favors; who are not accustomed to own a superior, but who are themselves the masters, the dispensers of fortune and of honor, and the givers of all those dignities and powers by which Cæsar himself was exalted, and of which he assumed the entire disposal.

Recollect from whom the Scipios, the Pompeys, and even Cæsar himself derived his honors: from your ancestors, whom you now represent, and from yourselves; to whom, according to the laws of the Republic, we who are now your laborers in the field address ourselves as your fellow-citizens in the Commonwealth, and as persons depending on your pleasure for the just reward of our services. We are happy in being able to restore to you what Cæsar had the presumption to appropriate to himself, the power and dignity of your fathers; and happy in being able to secure to every Roman citizen that justice which, under the late usurpation of Cæsar, was withheld even from the sacred person of the magistrates themselves.

An usurper is the common enemy of all good citizens, but the task of removing him could be the business of only a few. The Senate and the Roman people, as soon as it was proper for them to declare their judgment, pronounced their approbation of those who were concerned in the death of Cæsar, by the honors and rewards which they bestowed upon them. They are now become the prey to assassins and murderers. These respectable citizens, we trust, will soon, by your means, be restored to